Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear.

The media conglomerate’s planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim’s games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.

News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim’s games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being “retired” by Adult Swim Games’ owner. He responded to the company’s decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio’s website.

  • brax@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    100
    ·
    10 months ago

    Cool, then they won’t have any problems with everybody downloading them for free.

    If they want to cry about lost revenue, then they can turn around and sue themselves for making the games unavailable

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        10 months ago

        I believe the text here is:

        “Pay for our product”

        “Make your product available for purchase”

    • dzervas@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      10 months ago

      exactly that, INCLUDING server-side binaries to re-create any online features

      I could argue that the source code should become public domain as well but we already sound like crazy people